occurred,
they mingled among the followers of Luther.

[Sidenote: Approaching difficulties of the Church.] To the internal and
doctrinal troubles thus befalling the Church, material and foreign ones
of the most vital importance were soon added. The true reason of the
difficulties into which the papacy was falling was now coming
conspicuously into light. It was absolutely necessary that money should
be drawn to Rome, and the sovereigns of the Western kingdoms, France and
England, from which it had hitherto been largely obtained, were
determined that it should be so no longer. They had equally urgent need
themselves of all that could be extorted. In France, even by St. Louis,
it was enacted that the papal power in the election of the clergy should
be restrained; and, complaining of the drain of money from the kingdom
to Rome, he applied the effectual remedy of prohibiting any such
assessments or taxations for the future.

[Sidenote: Peter Morrone becomes pope.] We have now reached the
pontificate of Boniface VIII., an epoch in the intellectual history of
Europe. Under the title of Celestine V. a visionary hermit had been
raised to the papacy--visionary, for Peter Morrone (such was his name)
had long been indulged in apparitions of angels and the sounds of
phantom bells in the air. Peter was escorted from his cell to his
supreme position by admiring crowds; but it very soon became apparent
that the life of an anchorite is not a preparation for the duties of a
pope. The conclave of cardinals had elected him, not from any impression
of his suitableness, but because they were evenly balanced in two
parties, neither of which would give way. They were therefore driven to
a temporary and available election. But scarcely had this been done when
his incapacity became conspicuous and his removal imperative. [Sidenote:
Celestine V. terrified into abdication.] It is said that the friends of
Benedetto Gaetani, the ablest of the cardinals, through a hole
perforated in the pope's chamber wall, at midnight, in a hollow voice,
warned him that he retained his dignity at the peril of his soul, and in
the name of God commanded him to abdicate. And so, in spite of all
importunity, he did. His abdication was considered by many pious persons
as striking a death-blow at papal infallibility.

[Sidenote: The miracle of Loretto.] It was during his pontificate that
the miracle of Loretto occurred. The house inhabited by the Virgin
immediately aft